The back of Samson’s jeans were ripped and bloody. A slab of flesh from his inner thigh hung out. One blade had done that. A second had split his inseam. The sight made a cold ache in Jeremy’s groin.
Cowboy crawled clear, and Tanya crouched beside Samson.
“Two big knife blades sticking up right outta the slide,” Cowboy said. He spoke loudly to be heard over the laughter, squeals of delight, and remarks from the trolls in the ceiling. “Fuckin’ A. All I could do to get him off the things. One of ’em got him right in the nuts.”
“One must’ve clipped his femoral,” Tanya said. “That’s why he died so fast. You don’t last a minute when that gets hit.”
“Must’ve been one bad sucker of a minute,” Cowboy said.
Tanya patted Samson’s back. Then she stood up. “Okay, let’s get going.”
“I ain’t gonna leave him here,” Cowboy said.
“That’s crazy,” Liz said.
“He’s too big for us to carry,” Tanya said. “We’ll be lucky to get out of this hellhole ourselves—we sure can’t make it hauling around a stiff.”
“No way I’m leaving Samuel here. He was my friend. What do you suppose these fuckin’ trolls’ll do to him when we’re gone?”
“He’s dead,” Liz said. “He isn’t gonna care.”
“Well, I reckon I care.”
He rolled the body over, took hold of its hand, and pulled it to a sitting position. Jeremy crouched at Samson’s back and lifted. Then Tanya joined in.
They raised Samson off the floor. Cowboy ducked and hoisted the body in a fireman’s carry.
Just the way Samson carried that fat old troll to the Ferris wheel, Jeremy thought. Only Cowboy was a lot smaller than Samson.
“You got him okay?” Tanya asked.
“Yeah.”
Liz stayed at his side, and Jeremy walked with Tanya.
He kept the cleaver in his right hand and held the candle ahead of him, squinting, trying to see beyond its glow as they made their slow way through the corridor. The trolls went silent behind them. There didn’t seem to be any openings in the floor, walls, or ceiling along this section of the hall. That was a relief, but Jeremy half-expected an attack at any moment, and he knew it might come from anywhere.
It’s up to me, he thought.
With Samson dead and Cowboy burdened under the big guy, Jeremy felt as if he had become the group’s main protector.
I’ll take care of them, he told himself. Me. Duke. I’m the main man now.
He felt a small flicker of pride.
Just ahead of him the hallway suddenly looked round.
“I’ll check it out,” he whispered, and took quick strides past Tanya.
He stopped at the edge of a contraption that looked like an enormous barrel lying on its side. A wooden barrel. Its inside walls bristled with spikes that gleamed in the light of his candle.
He nudged the rim with his foot.
His touch started the barrel into a slow spin.
Tanya brushed against his side. “Real cute,” she muttered.
“We can’t go this way,” Jeremy said.
Liz appeared at his other side and peered at the turning cylinder. “Shit. They sure rigged this damn place. How’re we gonna get through there? It’ll tear us to pieces.”
“We’ll get through,” Tanya said. “Cowboy, haul Samuel on over here.”
Forty-four
Dave swung the door open. He probed the room with his flashlight, and what he saw made him want to run from the Funhouse. But he knew they couldn’t leave without Debbie. He stepped inside. “Police officers!” he snapped. “Drop your weapons! Up against the wall!”
Joan entered. “Oh, dear God,” she muttered. The door bumped shut.
Shoulder to shoulder, they swept their handguns back and forth as the powerful beam of Dave’s flashlight moved through the darkness.
The trolls climbed off each other. They climbed off sprawled, motionless bodies. They shambled to the right side of the room, a couple of them tossing knives to the soft rubber floor, and pressed their backs against the wall. About a dozen of them. Most wore little or nothing. All were drenched with blood.
Four bodies remained on the floor.
Two males, two females.
Naked and mauled. Dave saw caved-in faces, eyeless sockets, slashed throats, a severed arm, a man whose chest had been stripped of skin. He saw worse, and jerked his flashlight away from the carnage. He stared at the trolls lined up against the walls.
“What are you?” he whispered.
A wizened old crone cackled, raised a hand from her side, and said, “What’re you? What’re you?” As she spoke, her hand worked, moving the “mouth” of the bloody sock it wore.
Dave aimed his pistol at her face.
“Bullet in the bean,” her sock puppet chanted. “Slug in the noodle. Bad for the brain-pan, that.”
“Shut up!”
Joan stepped forward. She stood over one of the female corpses. Dave lit it for her.
It was young and slender. The legs stuck straight out to the sides, as if a couple of trolls had played tug of war with them. Not much was left of the breasts. Nothing was left of the face.
“It’s not Debbie,” Joan muttered.
How could she tell?
Dave couldn’t bring himself to ask.
He saw for himself that the other mutilated female wasn’t Joan’s sister. This corpse was fat.
Joan stepped over the body. Turning around, she walked backward toward the door at the other end of the room. “Let’s go,” she said.
Dave swept his light over the trolls at the wall. “What about these…things?”
“I don’t care. Let’s just leave ’em.”
“After what they’ve done?”
“I don’t care. I want Debbie.”
Dave started across the room, shining his light on the bodies, stepping around them, his shoes sinking into the soft rubber mat, sliding on the blood. He aimed the beam forward to light Joan’s way. He shone it on the trolls along the wall.
Joan waited until he was close to her, then opened the door.
“Anybody comes out after us is dead,” he warned. Then he followed Joan through the doorway. He pulled the door shut and tried its knob. The door was locked. But just from this side, probably.
He backed away from it, pistol ready in case it should fly open, half-hoping the trolls would make a try for them.
Jeremy, crouching, put his cleaver on the floor and gripped one of the steel spikes to hold the barrel as steady as possible while Tanya crawled through. In the light from her candle, he could see Liz and Cowboy at the other end, also gripping spikes. Their efforts weren’t enough to keep the barrel from rocking slightly from side to side while Tanya made her way over Samson.
It sickened him to think they were using the boy this way. But none of them could’ve gotten through alive if they hadn’t dropped the body across the bottom of the barrel. Samson was tall enough to stretch most of the way from one end to the other, and thick enough to absorb the full length of the four-inch spikes.
Must have twenty or thirty in him, Jeremy thought.
Samson can’t feel them.
If he knew what was going on, he might even be happy about it. He was like a bridge that might get his friends out of here. And he would probably like the idea of Tanya squirming over him like that.
Tanya was almost out now. She stopped, sank down against Samson, kissed his lips, and whispered, “Thank you, Samuel.”
They’re all calling him Samuel now, Jeremy realized. As if it’s not right to use his nickname anymore.
Tanya raised herself. Kneeling on Samson’s chest, high up near his shoulders, she reached out. Jeremy set his candle on the floor. He grabbed her wrists and pulled as she sprang forward.
They stumbled together away from the barrel.
When they crouched down to hold it for Liz, it was rocking slowly, lifting Samson’s body from one side to the other. In sp
ite of the motion, he didn’t slip or slide at all. He might have been glued to the thing. But he wasn’t.
Robin pressed her shuddering body tight against the back of the seat and watched the troll scoot slowly along the Ferris wheel’s rim.
He was almost near enough to reach her.
She prayed that he would fall.
Though he moved cautiously, he didn’t seem afraid of that. His legs were hugging the narrow beam, his hands sliding forward, gripping it, pulling himself closer to her. He never looked down at his hands. His single eye stayed on Robin.
She had thought about trying to get away. She had even turned from him for just a few moments, peered over the front of the gondola, and weighed her chances of reaching the safety of the next car down.
It was about eight to ten feet below her, but farther out. Too far out to attempt a leap into its seat. More than likely, she would miss and fall behind it. She might be able to shinny down one of the outer wheels that slanted down from the side of her gondola, but even that seemed like too great a risk.
Face it, she’d thought, you’re a chicken.
She’d spent too long out there dangling in midair.
Besides, getting to a lower gondola would be no more than a temporary solution.
It would put her closer to the other troll, who was still a good distance below.
Unless she was ready to try climbing all the way down…
No way.
I’ll make my stand right here, thank you.
Now, with the one-eyed troll no more than an arm’s length away, she wondered if she had made the right choice.
“Don’t come any closer,” she said. “I’ll knock you down, dammit!”
A grin slid up his face.
Robin reached down to the seat. The cuffs lay there beside her right knee. She curled her fingers inside one of the bracelets.
“I’m warning you,” she said.
“I’m trembling.”
Hanging on to the seat back, she thrust herself away as the troll’s left hand dropped onto its edge. He leaned toward her, the gondola rocking under his weight. Before he could lurch forward and pounce in beside her, she grabbed his wrist. She tore his fingers from the seat, shot her other hand up from beside her leg, and swung at him. The loose cuff, flying at the end of its short chain, lashed his cheek. The impact knocked his head sideways. His mouth jerked open in pain. Robin twisted on her knees, yanking his clutched wrist across her body, tearing him off the beam, and letting go.
The troll yelped with alarm.
His right hand caught the back of the gondola. His left hand batted the air. Before it could find a hold—while he hung by only his right hand, twisting and kicking—Robin clawed his fingers off the edge.
He dropped straight down, yelling, “Noooooo!”
Joan had felt stunned and disgusted by the carnage in the dark room, nearly numb with worry about Debbie, but only a little frightened.
This spooked her.
A man hanging by his feet in the middle of the hallway. Waiting for them.
She felt as if an icy snake were squirming through her bowels. A chill climbed her back. Goose bumps swept up her legs and arms, prickled her face and the nape of her neck. Her nipples went achy and hard. Under her tight stocking cap, her scalp seemed to crawl.
She halted and stared at the man.
What’s he doing there?
He didn’t move.
Just waited, hanging in shadows not quite reached by the light of the few candles glowing along the walls of the corridor. Something about his indistinct shape made Joan suspect he was naked. And something about his shape was wrong.
She raised her revolver, aimed at him, and started walking closer.
“How does it look ahead?” Dave asked.
She glanced around at him. He was still walking backward, keeping his eyes on the door of the dark room. “See for you-self,” she said.
He turned. “Jesus!”
He swung his flashlight forward. Its beam found the hanging man.
He groaned.
Joan felt an odd mixture of revulsion and relief. The guy looked sickening, his guts drooping out like that, but this wasn’t any worse than what she had seen in the room. She was glad to know that he was dead. He wasn’t so scary anymore.
Dave turned the flashlight away from him.
Joan waited for Dave to come up beside her, then quickened her pace. When they neared the body, he hurried ahead. He kept his flashlight off it. He turned sideways, back to the wall, and stepped past it. Joan did the same.
Then she ran behind him. A couple of times she heard metal gratings ring under her shoes.
She recalled the stories of how Jasper Dunn used to lurk in the Funhouse and peer up skirts. This must be where he’d done it, she thought.
The next time she came to one, she glanced down and saw the faint, pale blur of a face. She gasped.
Dave’s head snapped around.
“Nothing,” she said. “Keep going.”
She saw more faces beneath the slatted panels.
A goddamn audience.
Dave halted. He had come to the end of the hallway. On the right was a closed door. On the left was an opening low in the wall.
He went to the opening, knelt down, and shone his light inside. “Christ,” he muttered.
“What?”
“It’s a slide.”
Joan crouched behind him and looked over his shoulder. The slide gleamed like silver. Three-quarters of the way down, twin blades stood upright, as if hunting knives had been plunged in through the back of the metal ramp. The blades and the lower portion of the slide were smeared with blood.
“Somebody went down it,” Dave whispered.
Joan squeezed his shoulders.
Not Debbie, she thought. It wasn’t Debbie. Please.
“The others must’ve gone a different way,” she said.
“I don’t know. After the first kid, the rest of them might’ve gotten past the knives okay.”
“Crawling over him?” Or her.
“Yeah.”
“God.”
“Let’s see about that door,” Dave said.
He gave the flashlight to Joan. She stood in the center of the hallway, left hand at her hip, shining the light on the door, right arm extended, aiming, finger ready on the trigger of her Smith & Wesson. She knew by the door’s hinges that it would swing outward when it opened.
Dave positioned himself to the right of the door, his weapon raised, its muzzle close to the frame. Reaching across his body with his left hand, he turned the knob and tugged.
The door stayed shut.
He looked at Joan and shook his head.
“Why don’t we shoot it open?” she said.
“If it’s locked, the kids didn’t go this way.”
“Maybe it locked behind them.”
“I think they took the slide.”
“Well, we can’t.”
A bolt snicked.
Dave flinched. Joan’s heart lurched.
He threw the door wide.
“Freeze!” Joan snapped.
The bloody thing on its knees in the doorway smiled. “Don’t shoot, Joanie.”
“We couldn’t get him out of there if we wanted to,” Tanya said.
“And we don’t want to,” Liz added.
“I sure hate to just leave him for the trolls,” Cowboy said.
“We left Shiner,” Jeremy reminded him.
“And Karen,” Tanya added. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure a way to get them out. We’ll put in a call to the cops or something. But first we’ve gotta get ourselves out of here in one piece.”
“Yeah, I reckon.”
“You want this back?” Jeremy asked, offering the cleaver.
“You keep it. I’ve got my toad-sticker.” Cowboy turned around and said, “Adios, there, Samuel.”
They started walking down the hallway, Tanya and Jeremy in the lead, Cowboy and Liz close behind them.
; They stopped at a set of double doors.
Jeremy’s stomach knotted.
Tanya muttered, “Shit.”
Jeremy kicked one of the doors. It flew open, and he lurched backward as he glimpsed someone in the candlelit room ahead of him—a skinny kid, red with blood, holding a candle. As the door swept back at him, he realized that the kid was himself.
He pushed the door wide and held it open.
Saw himself holding it open.
The room, about three times the width of the hallway, was paneled with mirrors. The candles standing upright on its floor reminded Jeremy of the spikes in the barrel. The surrounding mirrors multiplied their number and filled the room with tongues of brilliant fire.
No mirrors on the ceiling. Up there were grates. For the spectators.
The mirrors in front of Jeremy showed only him and candles—no waiting trolls. He stepped through the door.
As the others came in, he wandered beneath the nearest grate and saw a dirty bearded face above him. “Hiya, kid. How come y’ain’t dead yet?”
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Scrappy little pisser, ain’t ya?”
Jeremy raised his candle high, stretching upward, rising on tiptoe. Its flame licked up between the metal slats. The troll cried out as his beard caught fire.
“Ha!” Jeremy blurted.
“Good going, Duke!”
Jeremy watched the screaming troll shove himself up. Kneeling in the crawl space above the ceiling, he slapped at his fiery beard, but the flames swept up his face, caught his wild tangle of hair. In seconds his head was a ball of fire.
“How you like it, bitch?” Cowboy yelled.
Jeremy lowered his gaze to the mirrors in front of him. Cowboy, Liz, and Tanya all held candles high, were reaching toward other grates, jumping, shoving fire at the faces of the trolls above them. Liz laughed as she did it. Cowboy snapped curses, let out wild war whoops, called out, “Remember Sam!” Tanya did it in silence, rushing about the floor, dancing among the upright candles, stabbing her flame into the grates. Her sweatshirt flew up as she leapt, baring her tawny scarred belly.
Trolls gasped and shouted. At least a few of them, caught by surprise, squealed as fire found them.
“It’s all right,” Joan murmured. “It’s all right now.” She was on her knees hugging her sister, crying. Debbie clung to her and wept.
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